Climate change, environmental catastrophes and policies to mitigate them

Climate change is having an intense impact on populations around the world. Extreme climatic events, such as prolonged droughts, devastating floods and increasingly intense storms, as well as gradual processes of environmental degradation, such as desertification and rising sea levels, are making many regions uninhabitable, causing various types of migrations in the territory, climate displacements are involuntary and directly related to human activities that alter the climate and environmental conditions. Historically marginalized populations, such as indigenous people, quilombolas and riverside communities, are the most vulnerable to these impacts, since they have fewer resources and infrastructure to adapt to the new conditions. Women, especially black women, are the most impacted by these processes. In recent years, several tragic situations have occurred in Brazil, such as the floods in Rio Grande do Sul or tragedies resulting from human actions, such as Brumadinho and Marina in Minas Gerais or Maceió in Alagoas. All of these situations have caused people to be forced to move to other spaces, often without the necessary conditions. The lack of minimum infrastructure for survival, such as electricity, water and sanitation networks, schools, hospitals and housing, is a determining factor in the impossibility of returning to the most affected regions. Food insecurity and the interruption of highways and access roads are also a factor.